


still, a great deal of light falls on everything

by Princess_Sarcastia



Series: i am tired of re-writing tragedy without change. let them live. let them learn. let them love. [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Everyone Who Meets Them Will Love Them, Fix-It, Gen, Grief, Light Angst, Luke and Leia are Perfect Precious Cinnamon Roll Babies, Processing Trauma, References to Depression, The Force, and the hope and kindness we ask for, is the hope and kindness we BUILD, the only hope and kindess we get, this will contine as I continue to feel things about this goddamn universe, vague notions of galactic politics, who let me have feelings about star wars again? arrest them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:02:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27628571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess_Sarcastia/pseuds/Princess_Sarcastia
Summary: Scenes from a galaxy pulled back from the brink and forcibly confronted with its own flaws.In which various people learn to heal grievous wounds to their government, their relationships, and themselves.
Relationships: Bail Organa & Ahsoka Tano, Padmé Amidala & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: i am tired of re-writing tragedy without change. let them live. let them learn. let them love. [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020048
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	1. Bail

**Author's Note:**

> what up I'm back less than a month later with more weird prose about these broken people who stopped just short of ruining everything, and are now tasked with putting it back together. these will be in no particular order, and published as I write and feel comfortable with them. chapters titled with the POV character. 
> 
> title from a letter Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother, here: http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/11/238.htm

None of his colleagues dared call him unintelligent. Idealistic, yes. Soft. Too privileged, coming from a Core system, and a founding member of the Republic, at that, to know the real cost of certain measures, to understand the way things worked. But never unintelligent; you didn’t pass legislation successfully as one of the opposition leaders by being stupid. 

Still, they underestimate him. Equate compassion with a lack of cunning, instead of realizing just how compassionate you can be when you’re cunning about it. Bail sees, hears, intuits a hell of a lot more than most people, and more than most people realize, largely by design. 

It certainly comes in handy where dealing with the Jedi Order is concerned. Understanding that an entire group can operate first and foremost from a place of compassion means Bail has an easier time understanding what the hell the Jedi are doing right now.

What the Jedi are doing…it makes Bail hopeful for the future of the Republic. Hopeful that the Republic even has a future. They are, as ever, the warning animals fleeing before the fires and earthquakes, and for the past many, many months there has been far too much running.

For the first time since the war began, they are acting as _Jedi_ , and not generals. Negotiating peace at any cost. Which, yes, sometimes involves violence, but more often means sitting down with the parties involved for terms and impartial evaluation. 

There is still more violence than not, but the tide is turning. Duchess Krynze, were she alive to see it, would be satisfied the Republic has finally seen her way of things.

* * *

All this to say, Bail has been intrigued by Ahsoka Tano from the start. 

A jedi, then a traitor, then an advocate for Mandalore and probable commander of Republic forces. Her career has certainly been interesting, to those who are paying attention.

And Bail has always been paying attention. It’s not many people that Senator Amidala trusts to drag along on her more… _creative_ diplomatic endeavors. He would know. So, for Padmé to drag the girl into Separatist space, to meet a trusted friend, Ahsoka in turn must have been trusted, by Padmé at least.

He doesn’t think the Jedi Order realizes how obvious they’re being, when it comes to her.

Former Padawan Tano reappears on Coruscant some time just before Chancellor Palpatine is revealed to be not only a traitor to the Republic, but also a Sith Lord. An old evil, an impossible enemy from the heydays of the Republic when the impossible was reality, like something out of legend. And despite her rather abrupt departure from the Order, and subsequent stripping of rank in the GAR, she is allowed full access to the Jedi Temple, the Senate, and, if Bail’s intelligence from inside the GAR is correct, force-wielding prisoners inside the most secure prison on Coruscant.

Footage of Chancellor Palpatine’s offices that night will never be fully recovered, due to some strange _mishap_ on the part of his security forces. So, all they have to rely on is the testimony of the Jedi and whatever evidence they uncover.

All the pieces are there: Palpatine’s confession to General Skywalker, heresy as it is. Fragments of footage clearly showing Palpatine in a heated battle with the Jedi. The dead bodies left in his wake. Palpatine, as dead as the Jedi he killed. And the records that the man known only as Maul, a traitor to Palpatine’s conspiracy, pointed the Jedi toward before escaping their custody. Woven throughout are hints of the larger story, one Bail is sure _some_ of the other senators must have put together, but none of them have mentioned it, either.

He wonders if it’s for the same reason he hasn’t. 

Even Master Windu, for all his pointed references to her as Lady Tano, some unknown barb that slid unerringly under her skin every time, talks brisk circles around Ahsoka’s involvement, drawing all the attention onto himself, pushing it back toward Maul, tossing it to Skywalker who runs with it faster than the Senate can keep up.

They protect her at every turn, and Bail finds himself unable to poke holes in the story, to tease out what really happened, because they’re doing it as a kindness to a girl who’s known nothing but war and betrayal at the Republic’s hands.

A girl who Bail officially meets for the first time, before learning any of this, when she bursts, uninvited, into his office to quietly fall to pieces unobserved.

Breha gives him a soft, knowing look, seeing the whole of it in an instant with just the first piece in hand, and tells him to keep his tea close at hand; he’s going to need it.

* * *

Master Windu claims the final blow was his. And Bail wonders:

Is it because letting Maul take credit where it’s due would be challenged at every turn by suspicious senators? 

Or is it one more kindness to the young woman who successfully laid siege to _Mandalore_ , who was apprenticed for years to the finest warrior the Republic has; who didn’t deserve to shoulder this burden, too?

* * *

It is a true relief to offer her a place on one of Alderaan’s relief missions. Anything, to further ease that dead-eyed panic pervading her frame for the weeks they spend talking through the mess that is rebuilding a government.

One turns into two turns into four turns into something more than just a Jedi lending her services to a cause she deems worthy. Turns into: comradery with Ansatho and the rest of the relief teams, the deep faith of the people of Ryloth, and a kind of budding companionship that has been increasingly rare in Bail’s life, as he’s gotten older and more consumed with the causes and burdens of the Republic’s many, myriad peoples.

With the distance between them, this mainly involves Holocalls at the oddest of times, though luckily almost never when he can’t be interrupted, increasingly with no justification other than a desire to say hello. Her clear-cut, burnished kindness and dry wit are like a mountain breeze in comparison to his conversations in the Senate.

What a strange bond to form with a seventeen-year-old Jedi, Bail muses. But then, Ahsoka Tano is no stranger to burdens, and like calls to like.

Breha teases that, at this rate, she very well might offer her Alderaanian citizenship, as a thank you for her continued efforts, as a declaration that Ahsoka’s values and Alderaan’s values were kin; and as a silent offer of refuge from the Jedi Order and those heavy burdens she is so clearly learning to shuck from her shoulders.

He never presses the issue with Ahsoka. Why she can’t stand to stay on Coruscant for more than two or three cycles, why she refuses to take part in the re-structuring of the Jedi Order or allow her council to interfere in how she spends her time. But he does extend Breha’s offer to Ahsoka, to make it clear that she will not be cast adrift if she finds it necessary to cut ties with her people once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is this going to end with Ahsoka getting citizenship from a dozen worlds spread across the galaxy? yes. yes it is. I continue to have feelings about what an amazing person Bail Organa is. 
> 
> Come talk to me about this in the comments!


	2. Ahsoka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Force is _screaming_.

Blistering, terrible rage courses through her; how dare he, how _dare_ he—coherent thoughts flee before her outrage-hatred-anger. Even now, her bond with Anakin is the strongest she’s ever forged, emotionally and metaphysically. To accuse him of—of—she will _strike him down where he stands_.

But something prods insistently at her. 

_Darth Sidious is the Sith Lord who orchestrated the Clone Wars and played both sides of it from the beginning. I first learned the name from Count Dooku, though any chance of learning more about Sidious from Dooku has been lost._

_Why?_

_Because Count Dooku is dead. Anakin killed him while rescuing the Chancellor._

The part of her—that faint, sun-mirage bond stretching out into the infinity of the Force, more often than not—that listens to Master Obi-Wan cuts through her groundswell and says, _he’s still talking. Learn what you can before you cut him down like your master destroyed his replacement. More information is better_.

“And who is your master?” Ahsoka gathers her thoughts to ask, and the Force tolls like a bell.

Maul bares his teeth, unable to keep his façade of calm straight as he spits it out. “Chancellor Palpatine.”

The galaxy _shifts_. Ahsoka stumbles as reality re-orders itself beneath her feet; drops to one knee and brings a hand to her head as the world around her _screams_ , louder than anything she’s ever felt before. Not the high, clear sound of a fresh and immediate threat; no, this feeling is ragged and bloody and terribly _old_ , pushed to new destructive intensity out of desperate relief that Ahsoka can finally hear it. Maul twitches but does not fall as she has; she wonders if this is why he’s insane. If he could always hear the galaxy screaming.

She feels halfway unraveled already, because it makes _sense_ because it means—it means—

“Oh, Anakin,” Ahsoka breathes, clutching her head.

_Warwarwarwar_ pulses in waves outside this room, Mandalorian clashing with Mandalorian, grim delight at the simple nature of sentient against sentient threading through each warrior on both sides. A kind of righteous feeling that never made its way into any of the battles Ahsoka has fought.

In, out. In, out. In, out. Another explosion rocks the building and her montrals shudder in response to waves of force.

A hand appears in front of her, covered in synthleather, and Ahsoka looks up at Maul from her knees. She doesn’t wipe at the tears leaking from her eyes, doesn’t dare acknowledge her weakness right now.

He seems…almost apologetic. 

Like he regrets upsetting her.

There are no more words between them. She takes his hand and lets him help her to her feet, still struggling to comprehend the unimaginable. 

_Oh, Anakin. What have you done?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didn't write this in the original because it had nothing to do with what I wanted to talk about, thematically, but I still wanted to write it, so here we are!
> 
> I'm still processing how much I loved Ahsoka and Maul's interactions in S7, all these months later, so.


	3. Obi-Wan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Going directly from object in motion to object at rest takes a toll.

Obi-Wan doesn’t meet the twins until months after their birth.

* * *

The moment he arrived on Coruscant after everything on Utapau—with the 212th trailing behind him in waves because he hadn’t even spoken to Cody before the urgency in the living and unifying Force, united and tearing at him like loth-wolves, drove him into his fighter—he rushed to the Temple just in time to meet Mace and Ahsoka…and Anakin.

After it all spilled out of them, in fits and starts between the Temple hangar and the halls of healing; Maul and Ahsoka and Palpatine and Anakin and Palpatine’s last, desperate attempt to reach him commlink, the mystery of who he could call for support hanging over their heads—

Except for his many, many trips to the Senate rotunda, where he gives in to the urge to verbally savage every Senator that gets in his way, he doesn’t…leave it. The Temple.

He just hits a wall. It’s finally too much.

Ahsoka and Maul. 

Anakin and Palpatine.

Years of being denied the sanctity of his home for more than a week at a time, months and months apart, push him to hole up and dig his heels in. If any senator or commander or lesser general wants to speak to him, they can very well come to him, or _fuck off_ , because if they can’t deign to do that it can’t be that important.

Anakin delivers his resignation to the High Council mere hours before he departs Coruscant entirely—ostensibly for Naboo, though his frequent meetings with Rex, Cody, Aayla, Bly, Plo Koon and Wolffe, among others, build a suspicion in the back of Obi-Wan’s mind that he does them the courtesy of ignoring.

Padmé leaves with him.

Ahsoka leaves days after that, on some relief mission for Bail Organa, having apparently been knighted by Yoda and Yoda alone. Another one of their traditions dead and gone, then. Another piece of their culture denied to them by the effects of three years of utterly pointless conflict.

Mace wanders through the Temple like a silent guardian, grief and terrible truths lying in wait in his eyes, but he rarely speaks of them. He rarely speaks at all, still contemplating some revelation the end of the war and destruction of the Sith has afforded him. His silence has certainly been noticed by the other members of the High Council, and the senators who expend the effort to pay particular attention to the Head of the Order. At some point, Depa and Caleb take to wandering the Temple with him, towering pillars of support.

Quinlan left before he ever really came back, unable to comprehend reverting to the way things were, three years and entire lifetimes ago.

So…so many of them never came back at all. So many faces Obi-Wan will never see again. Some names, he has to search in the Temple records to discover their fate, because a dead Jedi became such a common occurrence that there are those who slipped through the grasp of his memory. 

His master, and his master’s master, and his padawan, all gone.

When the clones defect— _defect_ , they haven’t gone to the other side, they’ve simply decided that with no war to fight, the government that bought their lives and deaths had no say in their future. It’s not like there even is or ever was an “other side,” no matter what the shattered remains of the CIS parliament like to claim. When they _leave,_ when they claim their freedom, it isn’t a surprise. Not in the least because Anakin never met a subtle bone in his body he didn’t want to break.

Cody sends him a message with coordinates, “just in case.” And then, nothing.

Nothing.

Obi-Wan meditates in his rooms and walks through the Temple Gardens and visits the Senate whenever they build to some sort of obstinance in their proceedings he feels the need to quash personally or some senator believes the Jedi or the GAR have something to answer for.

If anyone wants to see him, that’s what he’ll be doing. They can come find him.

* * *

Padmé came to him. Back on Coruscant two months after the twins’ birth—and it was twins, he knows that much, at least—a whole month before she claimed she would return her duties when she left, and eight months before Naboo would have even though to ask it of her; to the surprise of not a single soul she’s ever met.

After a week of delivering impassioned speeches in the Senate, meeting with almost every member of the opposition to gauge their thoughts on how rebuilding was going, and, if Obi-Wan knows her at all, quietly inquiring after the potential candidates for a new Supreme Chancellor, she appears out of nowhere at the Temple’s entrance, demanding to be let in to see him.

Security at the Temple is…fraught. The bombing made their wartime policies even more stringent, and they haven’t relaxed them yet; even a galactic senator can’t enter without a Jedi to sponsor it.

She’s dressed discreetly, too, in a vaguely familiar vest that’s clearly made of the Naboo’s answer to armorweave. There are no visible weapons on her person, but he has no doubt she’s armed, even here. 

“Obi-Wan,” she says warmly, grasping his hand tightly when he reaches out to greet her.

“Padmé,” he returns, dipping his head.

“Shall we?” She says, turning somehow, inexorably, in the direction of his quarters, far away as they are, as a kind of hint.

He raises a brow, “Indeed,” and takes it, letting her lead them out of amused curiosity, and wondering when she had the time to memorize any part of the Temple’s layout. Her capacity to do so, he has no doubt of; nor her ability to gain access to those records.

Tea is offered and accepted, and with the opening ritual complete, everything left unsaid between them fills the air to the point of tension.

Padmé wraps her hands around her mug and lets out a long, slow sigh, some measure of her composure seeping away.

“How are you, really?” Obi-Wan says softly.

“Well, the afterpains have finally petered off,” Padmé says wryly, giving him a _look_.

A measure of regret stirs like an ache in his chest. “Congratulations on your children, Padmé; and forgive me for taking this long to express how happy I am for you.”

“Thank you.”

They sit in silence, sipping at their tea, and Obi-Wan wonders if he’ll ever manage to untangle the complicated grief and anger woven around him, a tangled net that pulls and tears with every breath. Wonders if he’ll ever speak to any of these people he holds so dear without the weight of everything they’ve done pressing down on him. All those secrets. All that violence. 

“Are we friends?” Padmé asks abruptly, forcing him to meet and hold her gaze with sheer force of will. “I’d like to think that we are, after all this time.”

“I would, too,” Obi-Wan returns, and the ache in his chest throbs. He can’t just say _yes_ , can he? Because it would be a lie, and he’s so tired of lying. He’s so…tired.

She smiles, kind, but sad, because she can see what he isn’t saying. “You are my friend,” Padmé straightens her spine. “And I’m worried about you, Obi-Wan. Staying holed up in the Temple isn’t doing you any favors.”

“Yes, well, running away from it won’t solve any problems, either,” he snaps, and closes his eyes regretfully.

“Is that why you’re angry with me? Because you think I ran away from all the problems here on Coruscant?” She raises an eyebrow at him. “Or is that why you’re angry at Anakin, and you’re just taking it out on me, too?” She says scathingly. But there’s an undercurrent of _hurt_ flowing through the Force around her.

“I never said I was—” no, he swallows that, because he is angry, and he still doesn’t want to lie. Even if it would be kinder. “Yes. Alright, I am angry at the both of you. At the Senate, at Palpatine, and the Order, and Ahsoka, and—Force, I’m just angry, Padmé, all the time, because not a damn thing any of us have done in the last three years seems to matter, anymore. None of it ever mattered!” He doesn’t yell, but he knows his agitation is bleeding from him like an open wound in the Force. “We were all just pawns to him! You, handing him the chancellorship on a platter,” he spits, “Anakin letting himself be led down the path to the dark without saying a Force-dammed word to anyone, and then _running away_ , yes, because Force forbid he ever ask for help! Me, leading an army of enslaved men to their deaths for a contrived political game without ever stopping to consider the larger picture. Dooku was right; Qui-Gon would be so ashamed of me. Of what the Order has become,” he finishes bitterly.

“You think you’re the only one who’s angry?” Padmé leans in, setting her mug aside to wholly pin him in place with her eyes. “The system of government I’ve dedicated my _life_ to is crumbling still, even while we watch. Our ability to govern democratically is slipping through our fingers like so much water, and the one thing—” her voice cracks, and she swallows. “The one thing in my entire life I’ve ever done just because I wanted it, because it felt right, and it made me stronger, and damn the consequences—well. It turns out you can’t damn the consequences after all.” She pushes away from the table and covers her eyes. “Shit. I’m going to go home in another month or two or ten and my children won’t even recognize me, Obi-Wan. Because I have to be here, fixing what we broke.

“If it even can be fixed,” she finishes softly, hand still drawn over her face.

Obi-Wan huffs and tries to lodge the burning in his eyes back underneath that overwhelming fog of exhaustion. “Is it really that bad?”

“We still haven’t elected another Chancellor, and at this point, the Galactic Senate can’t function without one. There are plenty of systems who have more than half a mind to let it all just…crumble back to our planetary foundations.”

“I take it you won’t be suggesting yourself as a candidate?” He tries engaging in politics instead to bury it, a desperate last resort. “I’m sure Anakin, at least, has put the idea forth,” he adds.

She lets her hand drag down her face so as to give him another _look_. “Yes, and that’s why he’s still on Naboo with our children, instead of here. Naboo cannot lead the Republic again, not after Palpatine kept his seat for so long.”

“Too long,” Obi-Wan mutters into his mug, trying to douse his bitterness with tea. His attempt to flee his feelings is caught in the tangled net they weave, neatly attempting to strangle him. “What about Bail?”

“He would do it, if we asked, but I don’t want to put that on his head.” She tips her head to the side. “Plus, there are any number of former Separatist planets thinking about rejoining the Republic—if it even still exists—that would balk at the idea of a Chancellor from so deep in the core; from a founding member of the Republic.”

“Hmm. That would rule out Senator Mothma as well, then.”

“Yes,” Padmé gives him a small grin. “We need an incorruptible figure who will immediately move to give up the emergency powers we’ve loaded onto the Chancellorship; with no ties to Palpatine, preferably from the Mid Rim, or even the Outer Rim Territories; who furthermore can actually _do the job_.”

“Yes, that is a bit of a tall order.”

“Honestly, half the reason the Republic is still standing is because the Jedi stepped in to end the war.”

He runs a hand over his jaw slowly. “And the other half is Ahsoka. Perhaps we should ask her opinion on this mess, supposing we could catch her during her brief stop-overs on Coruscant.”

“Obi-Wan,” Padmé chides, with _prideprotectionlonging_ leaking from her like a sieve in the Force. 

Silence falls again, and Obi-Wan breathes, in, out; in, out, before topping off both their mugs and leaning away from the table, new warmth leaching into his hands.

The Force nudges his mind. He lets his eyes fall halfway shut, hears: _perhaps we should ask her opinion on this mess_ , feels: a cold so pervasive it sinks into his bones and makes his next exhale visible, sees: a spear struck deep into the ground like a declaration.

Before he can let that premonition crystalize into any real particular insight, Padmé clears her throat. “Obi-Wan, I—” she stops. “I just wanted—” and again. “I’ve missed you, these months. I missed you when the twins were born, and I think I still miss you now even when you’re right in front of me.” A fiercer kind of longing rises in her, so visceral Obi-Wan can feel it in the back of his own throat. “You are my friend,” she repeats, “and I, I would like it very much if you would come back to Naboo with me and meet my children.”

His lips part uselessly while he searches for something to say. “Padmé, I…”

“I want them to know you,” she plants her demands more certainly in front of him. “And if that means I have to banish my husband to Sola’s house for a week so you can keep hiding from each other, so be it. But you’re my friend, too, and I want them to know you.”

The longing stretches between them, latching onto him until it feels like his own. And maybe it is. He can’t quite picture what that would be like; picture what twin fusions of two of his dearest friends will look like, what holding them in his arms will inspire in him. He doesn’t, overwhelming realization striking him, even know their names, and admits as much.

“Luke,” Padmé smiles reflexively, like the sun breaking through the clouds. “And Leia.”

A sigh of relief floods through the Force around them like a dam driven to bursting, and Obi-Wan blinks back more tears. _Second sunset in a familiar-unfamiliar desert. Cool clear mountain air_. _Burnished hope tucked away to grow unimpeded_.

“Luke.” He repeats roughly. “Leia.”

* * *

Their weight in his arms is devastatingly familiar, somehow, and he loves Anakin and Padmé twice over for creating such incredible beings.

And when they open their eyes and wave their hands and feet in the air, blinding twin presences in the Force reaching for him so delicately, his shields unfurl like solar sails, immediately attuned to them.

A Feeling strikes him. “Oh, I’m in so much trouble,” he breathes down at them, and feels warm with their attention. 

Luke coos. Leia burbles back.

“Yes, yes I am,” he says in a stronger, sillier tone, the way all younglings should be spoken to.

Anakin just laughs at him. “That’s just what Ahsoka said.”

Obi-Wan can’t even scrounge up the urge to be cross with him, still enraptured by these tiny beautiful little people. What an excellent shield they’ll make for their idiot father, whenever one of his loved ones could just shake him with frustration.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some part of Obi-Wan Kenobi is built to love people, _especially_ Luke and Leia. At least, that's always been my sense of him. This dude needs some stability, some friends, and a good nap, in that order. 
> 
> More than that though he's gotta get some stuff off his chest and have some ugly conversations with people who mean a lot to him, and this was just the least of it. 
> 
> Anyway. From a meta perspective, when the Order doesn't fall at the end of the galactic civil war, Obi-Wan kind of has to deal with a turning point in his life where he is no longer slowly losing everything he holds dear, from loved ones to ideals to his entire world. And it's a good thing, to be sure! There will come a day when this man is no longer meant for infinite sadness through the Force. But that doesn't mean it's an easy road.


End file.
